Atlantico.fr: What are the consequences that the pandemic can leave on Western societies on the one hand, and in France on the other?
Stéphane Gayet: The American Online Journal ” Bloomberg opinion », Founded by the eponymous former mayor of New York, evokes the risk that, when the CoVid-19 epidemic is over in the United States of America, a phobia of the coronavirus does not develop and persist. The author believes that a large number of people will have their minds permanently inhabited by the fear of a resurgence of CoVid-19; he uses the expression ” ghost virus To designate the conviction to see signs of reappearance of the virus when it is not.
This reflection on the post-CoVid-19 period is an opportunity to question the imprint that this viral epidemic out of the ordinary may leave in our psyche. Before CoVid-19, it seemed as though it was possible to curb – with varying degrees of difficulty, but to curb and even stop – any bacterial or viral epidemic. Because we have come to the end of major epidemics plague, cholera, exanthemous typhus, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, acute anterior polio and others. HIV infection is also controlled and outbreaks of Ebola fever are brought under control on a case-by-case basis. Until the end of 2019, this feeling of control over infectious epidemics contributed to reassure populations in terms of collective infectious risk. Healthcare-associated infections (nosocomial infections and others of the same type) are most often not epidemic infections: it is rather a case-by-case affair.
But with this SARS-CoV-2, everything is called into question : this virus is diabolical with a pathogenic power that is very difficult to define and fight; China has lied to us copiously; the World Health Organization (WHO) lied and showed that it was unreliable, neither in terms of integrity nor in terms of competence; there has been and continues to be a coalition for discredit the combination of hydroxy chloroquine and azithromycin ; there is a kind of mess about preventive measures to adopt ; international research teams are torn apart over vaccines, and patients are now confused with simple carriers of the virus. This great international disorder is widely scary: we have the impression that everything is going wrong, that we can no longer trust anyone, which contributes to a feeling of insecurity that is both infectious, economic and political.
Several top scientists – including geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude – said that the SARS-CoV-2 genome (RNA) sequence carried genetic scissors stigmas ; in other words, there are strong arguments to believe that this viral strain is the result of the laboratory modification of a natural strain of coronavirus. This testimony of a young chinese woman doctor is disturbing:
Until the attacks of September 11, 2001, the American people thought they were safe from any attack, sort of invincible. He must have been disillusioned. Now he knows he is vulnerable to microbial epidemics. I believe that this is the main sequel that this epidemic will leave: this feeling of vulnerability, insecurity both infectious and economical.
In France, it’s quite different, because, unlike the United States, which managed the epidemic in a way that was not very rational to say the least, we had a proactive policy and decisions were taken at the national level. Admittedly, there have been and still persist a lack of relevance and coherence in decisions, but we have not – at least until the end of the first round of municipal elections – let the epidemic go on with folded arms. On the other hand, in France, this CoVid-19 will leave as a sequel in the spirits a worsening loss of confidencence in political powers and pharmaceutical laboratories, which is saying a lot. We have had evidence of incompetence and corruption, which of course fuels the distrust and what is more is led to disillusionment.
I think that there is something there to make a deep and lasting impression on people’s minds. One can have the impression of a (slow) societal disintegration and therefore of a increased entropy (disorder in physics).
Is the notion of phantom risks particularly relevant in the face of the consequences that the coronavirus pandemic can leave on our societies?
The author of the article in Bloomberg opinion evokes the American situation. President Trump has long played down CoVid-19 by claiming that it is nothing more or less than a new flu of no particular severity. For weeks, he refused to wear a mask. Faced with this inconsistency of the national federal power – at least of its head – each state has managed the epidemic as it sees fit, hence a disparity between states, not to mention the health inequalities within states and even cities, inherent inequality in the United States which always privileges freedoms.
In the article in question, the author believes that this epidemic will have scared a lot of people : either personally affected, or affected by the death of loved ones, or impressed by everything they have seen, read or learned through various channels concerning this epidemic (in the United States) and more generally this pandemic (in the world).
Hence the notion of ” ghost viruses “, These invisible viruses which we can fear the presence everywhere. Those most fearful for their health and that of their loved ones can probably develop a phobia of SARS-CoV-2, this Chinese virus with mysterious origins and strange pathogenicity; even its transmission remains partly unclear, between wet aerosols (microdroplets), dry aerosols (airborne particles suspended in the air) and mains. There is therefore something to feed lasting fears in people with an anxious tendency and who do not want to leave anything to chance. However, we must resign ourselves to accepting the hazard, the uncertainty, the risk not perfectly controlled.
To answer the question asked, the notion of “ghost viruses” with CoVid-19 is relevant to people who are naturally prone to worry and fear (not adolescents, in general).
Because we know that SARS-CoV-2 cannot be eradicated and therefore that many people will remain asymptomatic carriers for a longer or shorter time. It is logical to think that under these conditions the virus could reappear at any moment and so it is. But that does not justify the phobia: simply vigilance, caution and mistrust.
How can we protect ourselves from these risks?
This CoVid-19 pandemic carries a blow to enlightened transhumanism. These are the people who imagine that, in just a few decades, we will be able to put the entire human body into equations, that we will have completely deciphered all the genes of the human genome, that we will be able to modify this genome at will and that from then on we will have the possibility of eliminating all genetic diseases, avoiding almost all acquired diseases and especially that we can constantly improving the human genome, until making the human being practically immortal.
These transhumanists see the genome as simple software and cells as simple test tubes. This is not my vision at all and I think they are devilishly wrong; it suffices to take a little interest in cell biology and epigenetics to understand that their vision is phantasmal.
If you’ve watched the video above, you may feel like reality is beyond fiction in this case. Anyway and while keeping her feet on the ground, what this young Chinese doctor reports is perfectly plausible. Let’s be clear: this is not about creating a virus from molecules – what we don’t know how to do -, but modification of a natural virus, which we master, but without knowing all the consequences and far from it …
To answer the question asked, it’s time to get disillusioned about transhumanism and ideas like that. When we severely modify nature, we expose ourselves to unforeseeable and sometimes dramatic consequences. We must accept the uncertainty, the hazard, the risk, because our world has become bubbling and even explosive. It is more than certain that new pathogenic viruses will appear, but no one knows neither the time nor the place. It is almost certain that SARS-CoV-2 will not go away and that it will persist in healthy carriers. What one can fear is a reappearance of an epidemic of CoVid-19 in naive societies (term here immunological) living apart and without any technology (like certain Amazonian villages), in favor of ‘a contamination by an individual carrying the virus and immune.
We hear this every day in the media: everything has been shaken up, disrupted and our world has changed. Our relationship with risks is modified: we had the impression – with insurance assistance – that we could manage all the risks well. But this is no longer the case.
To protect yourself against viral risks and the risks of viral phobia, it will be useful to review many things in our way of life. As we have seen with CoVid-19, it is the frail and chronically ill people who have suffered the most from the infection: we must to do everything in our power not to end up in this state vulnerability. We know how to prevent overweight, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, renal and respiratory failure, metabolic disorders, etc. It’s a question hygiene of life (not cleanliness) in general. But lifestyle advice is not successful, it is considered superfluous and irrelevant, on the grounds that medicine would be capable by drugs of prevent everything and cure everything : serious illusion. Many very young people want to consume life with greed, arguing that life is short and that we must make the most of it… Hence a frenzied consumerism on all levels, which seems incompatible with obtaining a healthy body and mind with strong immunity, best way to protect yourself in the end.
Read also: Coronavirus: but what do we really know about the aftereffects of those who have recovered?
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